Period 2004 – 2009

After the appearance of Microstation version 8, the basic tool of the GIS, the Cáceres GIS started to be re-designed and reorganized in 2004. This new version allows to the GIS to be structured in a easier and more powerful way. An interface adapted to the needs of the Municipality is designed, with button bars that automate many of the processes to load maps, so it makes easier the access to the information contained in the GIS for the municipal technicians. The reorganization is completed with a new more powerful server to centralize all the information managed by the GIS.

For several months, it was worked on the design and later implementation of a database for the Municipal Inventory and of a working procedure to allow the Inventory Section to manage its data independently, but integrated into the GIS.

With the aim of updating and expanding the basic information of the street map of the city, in 2004 it is signed an agreement with the University of Extremadura (UEX) to review the names of streets, the number of portals, and to identify chemists’s, bars, tobacco shops, buildings, kiosks, traffic direction, banks, public buildings, etc., on the map.

At the end of 2004, the new content of the GIS is released to the municipal officers in a training course integrated into the continuous training plan of the Municipality.

In 2005, the partial plans, reclassifcations and urban projects that develop the PGOU are incorporated to the GIS, adding a new aspect to the disposition of the city and which are not in cartography. As they arrive to the Section, they are adapted to the structure of the GIS and they are added, so they can be accessed by all users connected to the system.

In May, 2005, the GIS section is ordered to develop a street map on paper to replace the obsolete one that dates from 1999, edited by an external company. The result of editing that street map is a circulation of 10,000 copies of it at 1/8,000 scale with details of streets, monuments, public utilities, roads, etc, and the incorporation of new urban areas in development.

At the end of 2005, the same street map is adapted to the web of the GIS, some functions are incorporated such as searching by street name and number, or the location of place names for the entire municipality. The final result becomes into the street map of the Municipality’s official website.

It should be noted that with this method of work, the production costs of the street map of the city, of its second and subsequent editions, is practically zero; firstly, because the rights are property of the Municipality for having been produced by its workers; and secondly, because it has looked for some sponsors who have paid the printing costs.

In 2006, the works to create the design of a complex database and the necessary procedures to incorporate to the GIS all the data related to Planning were started. These works affect to several sections of the Town hall, which makes it difficult for the desing of working methods.

In June 2006, thanks to the assignment of the Urban and Rural mapping in digital format, by the Provincial Management of the Cadastre of Cáceres, the GIS obtains all the municipal cadastral data.

In 2006, an ambitious project, in collaboration with the Computing Service and the Statistics Section for the integrated management of Population Census, was started. For this purpose, a working group was formed and, until the month of May 2007, it had the following objectives:

• To determine, as precisely as possible, what the real numbers of police were on every street. For this, the city has been revised and photographed portal by portal.
• To link the data contained in the register of the city, with the database resulting from the previous step.
• To detect and resolve the mistakes of the previous step, so that the final result allow, on the one hand, to locate any enumerated person in the map, and on the other hand, to determine how many people are registered in a portal of the city.

For this, a new informatic tool for the management of the population census and the control of the street plan, completely interconnected, has been implemented. Finally, to complete this work, the work procedures that allow to do the maintenance of this complex system were designed.

In November 2006, the reissue of the street map in paper is published with updated information from new neighbourhoods and new streets.

In 2008, GIS Technicians works for the collection and digitization of Ancient Cartography, the recovery of municipal roads, and the place names of the municipality. Ancient digitized and geo-referenced maps from others on paper, from different sources, have been incorporated to the GIS. Among others, it is digitized:

• The MTN 1:50,000 maps series corresponding to the municipality of Cáceres, in different years (between 1936 and 2000).
• The updated maps of the IGN 1:25,000 series corresponding to the municipality of Cáceres.
• The SGE 1:50,000 maps series corresponding to the municipality of Cáceres.
• Cartographic maps of the city of Cáceres 1993 1:5,000 scale.
• Cartographic maps of the city of Cáceres 1981 1:500 scale.
• Cartographic maps of the city of Cáceres 1942 1:2,000 scale.
• Maps of ancient cartography of the entire municipality with different scales and in different years (between 1898 and 1945).
• Rural Cadastral Planes of 1981.

In addition, the information linked to the Special Plan (PEPRPA) has been completed, digitizing and geo-referencing all the planes in paper that compose that plan, and all the asociated documentation.

In July, a new edition of the street map of the city on paper is published, this is the third, which incorporates the orthophoto of the city as background, and updates the new neighborhoods.

On 1 April 2009 an airborne laserscanner is done to generate an orthophoto and a new map for the city , but a few months later the contractor of work goes into bankruptcy and the contract is terminated , which prevents this map could be completed.

In June we presented the “Cáceres GIS Development Over Geographics and GWP” project to BE Inspired Awards 2009. Of the 19 cities worldwide that are presented , some of the importance of Moscow, Grenoble or Helsinki, Cáceres GIS is selected as a finalist. On October 13, we went at Charlotte (North Caroline-USA ), to know the winners. In the morning, municipal GIS presentation was made in the category of “Cadastre and Land Developement”, and in the evening was the awards . Finally we did not win , but to have been selected among the 19 finalists are all candidates, it represented an award and recognition for which we are very proud.